SCG_Names_Lulle_120121.pdf (294.37 kB)
Download fileRepertoires of ‘migrant names’: an inquiry into mundane identity production
journal contribution
posted on 2021-04-12, 08:30 authored by Aija LulleThis paper examines how, when and where personal names are produced as ‘migrant names’.
Drawing on 21 interviews with young Irish and Latvian migrants in the UK, I demonstrate how
mundane stories, linguistic details, and repertoires about migrant names are embodied, mobile,
relational, and produce everyday social distinctions. Empirical analysis unpacks changes in
naming stories throughout participants’ multiple migration trajectories in Ireland, Latvia, the
UK and beyond. I argue for a geographically sensitive take on migrant names because they are
produced as such through recognisable repertoires of displacement and then re-emplaced in
certain spaces and times. The paper makes three main original contributions. The first is to
interdisciplinary literatures on names, specifically on the significance of temporal and spatial
contexts and the relationalities underpinning the production of migrant names. Second, it brings
to geographies of identities novel understandings of ethnic and national power relations in
naming practices, including an emphasis on the process of ambiguous whiteness. Finally, I
contribute much-needed methodological propositions on how to pseudonymise names in
migration research.
Funding
Horizon 2020 Programme project YMOBILITY, grant number 649491
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Geography and Environment